******
Just as I finished cleaning up the mess from the trash can, and wiping up water from the floor down the hall and in the bathroom, I heard a key turn in the front door downstairs. I put down the trash can, threw my towel in the hamper and hurried to my bedroom, and was pulling my sexy green caftan over my head, when Sam shouted up the stairs.
“Hey, Babes! I’m home!”
He was early. It was only nine o’clock and he didn’t usually get in until ten. “Be down in a minute!” I called back, as quietly as I could. I was trying not to awaken Annamae who had to be asleep by now. I shrugged the caftan down, and headed for the stairs, still limping.
I’d checked the pinkie toe and didn’t think I’d broken it, but it still ached a bit, and the nail was split on the end. I limped into the kitchen where I could see Sam’s entirely fabulous ass sticking out the fridge as he searched for his supper.
“Hi, Hun. What are you doing home so early?” I asked as I went over and pulled him out of the way so I could get the casserole out to heat it up. I usually had his food warmed and ready to eat by the time he got home. That’s what he got for being early. He bent down and gave me a buss on the lips as I came up with the dish. Mmm. That man still had the ability to make my heart go “lub-dub” after fifteen years.
“Got done early.” He watched me, his brow furrowed, as I cripped over to the microwave. “Uh, why’re you limping?”
I explained about tripping over the trashcan, and about Annamae’s assassination of the hair clump. I’d eaten earlier with Annamae but I decided I could use a snack, so I got two plates down from the cabinet.
“Heh, well, that piece of hair won’t be bothering anybody else. Sounds like she did a pretty good job of wasting it,” he laughed. “Seriously, though, I think you’re right; she does need to go in for an eye check. This sounds like the massacred gummy bear and the pea she snuffed.” He eyed me limping back over to pull the casserole out. “And you might need to change to fix that pinkie toe of yours. It could be broken, you know.”
I dished out his plate, put a snack sized amount on mine, and sat down across from him. I frowned. “Nah, I don’t think it’s broken. Just needs a good soaking.” Damned if I wanted to morph into my wolf form right then just to get my toe to stop hurting. I’d save that for something a bit more serious. Like a broken back or neck.
He shrugged as he forked down his food. No, he didn’t wolf it down. He has great table manners and never even licks his fingers while eating. Of course, he sometimes licks mine but that’s another story, involving chocolate - and chicken grease. And that’s none of your business.
“Suit yourself, Cady. How’d your day go? I mean before you got home and had to do a crime scene clean up after the slaughter of the hair clump?”
I smiled. All my close friends and family call me “Cady” instead of the “Cadence” everybody else does. Mom decided to name her daughters for her sisters, and one of her sisters’ is named “Cadence”, the other, “Hortense”. I have a sister named “Hortense” and while it’s a perfectly good name, I’m kind of glad I wasn’t the first-born daughter. Even my sister isn’t fond of the name. She won’t answer to “Hortense”. Try “Tensy”.
I thought back over my day, and my job at the barber shop. What? You never heard of a werewolf barber? Believe me, we work everywhere. Besides, I like my job. I’ve had worse jobs. Much worse. And much more violent. Besides, between my job as a barber and Sam’s as a masseur - yeah, I know - we make out pretty good.
“My day went quite well, thank you. No excitement, just gossip and shop talk. Just the way I like it. How was yours?” I smiled when he developed a small frown between his eyes. He usually liked his job down at the massage parlor. Generally, it was just as unexciting as mine, and you can believe it when I say he was all over unexciting. So was I. Apparently, today it had been a bit more exciting than he would have preferred.
“Eloise came in today,” he said heavily.
Somehow, I knew he was going to say that. He only gets that little frown of irritation when she’s been around. Sam is a really yummy looking guy. That golden blond mane on his head, and his height of six and a half feet coupled with a fine body of divinely defined muscles, not to mention an outrageously gorgeous face surrounding a set of piercing blue eyes, formed a pretty pleasing package. Talk about your chick magnet. Cubed. But as long as I’m Mrs. Sampson Hilliard - which I will be ‘til the day I die, or forever, if I can swing it - they can look, but they’d better not touch.
Most women, when they saw the ring, which he never removed, were polite enough to at least flirt covertly. Not Eloise. She’d started showing up at the parlor every two or three weeks about four months ago, and always specifically asked for him. She was a shameless flirt. He told me that, lately, she’d even started hanging around the gym next to the massage parlor where he went to work out. He’s considering going to a different gym.
Unfortunately, when she comes in to get a massage, he can’t avoid her. So, when he said she came in today in that tone of voice, I knew she must have been particularly bothersome. I didn’t ask what she’d done. She just won’t believe he’s a happily married man. We’d met, and it was obvious she was shocked I was his wife. It was easy to follow her train of thought: what the hell is he doing with her?
Clearly she thought I wasn’t all that much with my short, kinky, off-black hair, my plain brown eyes and so-so figure. Not to mention I’m what’s become sarcastically known as “vertically challenged” - I’m five feet two inches tall, thank you. Or that’s my story, anyway. And I’m black, which seems to throw some folk off around here when they meet me and Sam for the first time, and discover I’m not just the nanny to the cute little girl with us. And, I have a thin scar that runs down the right side of my face, curving down and ending underneath my chin. The scar also runs up into my hair - which is why I’ve got a pure white streak on that side. My hair grew back after the injury that caused the scar but the color was leached out never to return, and while the scar isn’t nearly as prominent as it initially was, it’s still there and noticeable. I’m cool with it. Sam loves me just the way I am. He married me after I got the scar. This scar is one reason why we don’t like excitement.
Eloise lives in our general area, about four or five miles away, though not in our subdivision, and seems to think she’s got a good shot at getting Sam into a compromising position. She just doesn’t know. Sam doesn’t compromise on some things, especially his marriage vows. Neither do I.
We’ve been living here in the small town of Matthews, North Carolina for five years now, and we like it here. The school Annamae attends is a good one; we live in a nice, single-family two-story on a half-acre lot with a small creek running through the woods in the back, and we have good neighbors.
Our town is adjacent to a fairly large city, Charlotte, with all the amenities you might want - if you wanted such amenities - and though it was murder for a while getting to our jobs in the city during rush hour traffic - no matter which route we took - we still thought it one of the best areas we’d lived in. And last year, after we managed to get our work hours changed so that now I don’t have to be at the barber shop until nine-thirty and Sam doesn’t go in to the massage parlor until eleven, it’s even better since we’re able to avoid most of the heavy traffic, now. Besides, this beats the wheels off the last place we lived.
We finished eating; I stacked the dishes in the dishwasher which meant it now had a full load, so I turned it on. Sam stood, stretched, and brought his arms down around me. He grinned down at me, raising an eyebrow. I love it when he raises an eyebrow. “You ready to go upstairs, Babes? We can --”
The doorbell rang. Damn. Now who could be ringing the bell at ten o’clock on a week night? And just as Sam was raising his eyebrow. I sighed, and slipped out of his arms and headed for the door. He followed me. The faint scent I was getting thr
ough the door seemed familiar. I peeked out through the sidelight, to see…Eloise? What the hell was she doing on my porch this time of night? Crap. Can’t even think of the devil with her showing up. I opened the door.
“Hello, Eloise, what’s up?” I asked unenthusiastically. Sam nodded his greeting - just as unenthusiastically, I might add.
Eloise is drop dead gorgeous. We are about the same age, but otherwise, she’s everything I’m not: tall, blond, svelte, with a pert little nose and clear blue eyes. And white. I thought her lips were a little on the thin side, but that’s just my opinion.
“I’m sorry to bother y’all this time of night,” she said in that voice that - to me - sounds as if she’s gasping for air. My friend and neighbor, Sandy, calls it “breathless”, and said it’s supposed to be sexy, but as far as I’m concerned, it still sounds like she’s running out of air and could use an oxygen mask.
“I was on my way home from the Harris-Teeter when my car started making this awful noise and just stopped! I knew y’all lived around here somewhere, and when I saw Sam’s car parked out front, why, I knew I was in the right place, then!”
Talk about blatant. “Uh, come in, Eloise,” I said with even less enthusiasm. How dumb